


spilled ink

by flyler



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Kara cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 03:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13695726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyler/pseuds/flyler
Summary: soulmate au where what you write on your skin appears on your soulmate. for day 4 of sanvers week.





	spilled ink

**Author's Note:**

> yes, this is a day late. i have a busy week. but i wanted to publish this. so enjoy!

The myth goes like this:

 

A long time ago, God saw how sad and lonely human beings were without their other half, so he gave them a way to communicate. If one were to write on their skin, their other half, or “soulmate”, would have those same words appear on their skin.

 

There’s rules, of course. God wanted to push the humans in the right direction, not give them the whole picture― things such as names, or addresses, or phone numbers don’t show up on a soulmate’s skin. And you don’t get the ability to see your soulmate’s writing until both of you turn 13― some people still think that’s a bit young, but some say that at least they’re old enough to know how to talk. Toddlers scribbling markers on themselves and having another toddler somewhere else covered? Doesn’t seem like the best idea.

 

Alex is fifteen years old, and she’s been able to talk to her soulmate for a year now. She doesn’t really believe in all that religious garbage, but it’s the easiest way to explain how soulmates work to her new pet alien slash little sister. Kara does not have a soulmate; writing has never appeared on her skin, so it’s what they assume.

 

“Here,” Alex says. “My soulmate and I talk all the time. Watch this.” She writes _Hi!_ on her arm. A few minutes later, a _hey_ appears back.

 

“Woah!” Kara says, impressed. “That’s so cool. What’s his name?”

 

“Dunno,” Alex shrugs. “We’re not allowed to know, remember?”

 

“Yes.” Kara nods. “A push, not a picture.”

 

Alex knows plenty of things about her soulmate:

 

  * He plays soccer.
  * He’s funny, and Alex is thankful for that, because she doesn’t know if she’d be able to be soulmates with someone who can’t keep up with her sarcasm.
  * He’s kind, and sympathetic: the kind to get upset when his mother kills a spider instead of taking it outside.
  * If his homework questions and the fact that Alex didn’t get a reply until she was 14 are any indication, he’s about a year younger than Alex― eighth grade or freshman year is her guess.
  * Her sophomore year, on Valentine’s Day, he goes silent.



 

They would talk every day― about stupid classmates, mean teachers, the crazy gossip that goes around in public school (“Wait, you heard that rumor about Marilyn Manson, too? Maybe we live closer to each other than we thought.”), their family. Alex knows her soulmate is an only child, but has a lot of cousins, and her soulmate knows Alex got a sister a few years back. They give each other good morning and good night scribbles. They doodle on their hands and arms in class, creating stories without words.

 

When Alex’s soulmate goes silent, it’s in the morning. She doesn’t know what timezone her soulmate lives in; maybe it’s night time to him. Maybe it’s somehow earlier. Usually, though, their days start and end around the same time, so Alex has a feeling he at least lives in the United States. But he doesn’t even ask how her day is when she gets home from school, and when Alex writes a _You okay?_ on her arm, she doesn’t get a reply.

 

“Maybe he’s busy,” Kara says. “Maybe he lost his pen.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Alex murmurs.

 

“It’s not like he would just stop talking to you, Alex. You’re soulmates!” Kara’s voice is hopeful, but it doesn’t cheer Alex up. She doesn’t get why he’d just stop _talking_ to her.

 

Then Jeremiah leaves for a trip and doesn’t come back.

 

Alex and her soulmate don’t talk for several years― she spends high school and most of college talking to Kara, if she bothers to talk to anyone at all. Most people wouldn’t know this, but she isn’t used to bottling up her feelings, because she used to share everything with her soulmate. She had someone who wouldn’t judge her, no matter what she did.

 

She doesn’t even try to reach out to her soulmate until the day Hank Henshaw shows up in the jail cell, and it takes that incredibly sobering moment to turn her life around. It’s more of a, “Well, I’ve already had to go through _this,_ why not try and communicate with someone who shut me out?”

 

So she writes on her arm for the first time in years. _Are you there?_

 

There’s nothing. For ten long and harsh minutes, Alex’s handwriting remains the only thing on her arm, but right before she tugs her sleeve down, there’s a reply.

 

_I’m here._

 

And that’s how it is for the next few years. They talk about their day, just like the used to when they were children, albeit said days and the way they’re told are completely different, now. Sometimes, Alex feels like she has an entirely new person as her soulmate, and she wonders if her soulmate feels the same way.

 

_Not to be nosey,_ Alex writes one day, _but what happened on Valentine’s Day? You stopped talking all of a sudden._

 

Alex can feel the pause in her bones, but she gets back _Home trouble._ a few minutes later.

 

_I get that. My dad died not long after. It left a hole in me._

 

That’s how Alex’s days go: training and then working for the D.E.O., the entire debacle that was her sister becoming a caped hero, and then, one day, she walks across a tarmac when some asshole cop tells her to screw off in the most professional way possible.

 

―――――

 

_“See you around, Danvers.”_

 

Alex is infuriated. She’s not the type to hate a local cop because of the whole rivalry between cops and feds― she doesn’t have the time of day. But _this_ cop, in particular, annoys the absolute hell out of her.

 

_Met an asshole at work today,_ she writes. She’s home now, nursing a glass of wine and takeout. She knows from flipping news channels that Kara is out saving some children or putting out a fire or whatnot.

 

_Seriously? Me too. My asshole walked into my space today acting like it was theirs._

 

Alex can’t help but snort. Doesn’t she know the feeling. _Hopefully the asshole didn’t ruin your day._

 

_Nah. Talking to you has definitely made it better._ Alex can’t help but blush; something she’s noticed since their break in communications as teens is that her soulmate got incredibly smooth during those several years. Alex doesn’t know what’s going to happen when she finally meets her soulmate, but she has a feeling she won’t be ready.

 

―――――

 

When Alex realizes she’s a lesbian, it’s life just throwing yet another curveball at her, yet it’s different this time. Usually, life throws things _at_ her: a sister, a dead father, said sister becoming a superhero, very many aliens― but this is something life throws _in_ her. Alex isn’t the type of person to self-reflect, and now she has to.

 

She doesn’t like it.

 

Did fate, or whoever is in charge of matching soulmates (because there has to be _someone_ , right?) know she’d be a lesbian and give her a woman as a soulmate, or were they as clueless as her and give her a man? Is Alex’s soulmate a man?

 

She talks to Maggie― god, _Maggie_ ― and then she reads all the wrong signals, or maybe signals that weren’t even there, and she kisses her in the middle of a bar.

 

Too fresh off the boat, Maggie says. Doesn’t date heavily, Maggie says. Waiting for her soulmate, Maggie says.

 

Alex’s only date that night is a bottle of whiskey. In her tipsy-almost-drunk mind, she makes the decision to grab a pen and write on her arm.

 

_Are you a woman?_

 

She doesn’t get a response until the morning, when her head is pounding, but she looks at her arm and under her question is an, _Uh, yes?_ , and Alex can’t help but sigh in relief.

 

The next few weeks go by. Not really happily or terribly; they just go. Alex starts giving short answers to her soulmate when they share about their days, and it’s obvious her soulmate seems to get the message, because hi- _her_ messages start getting short in return.

 

Her soulmate always says good morning and goodnight, though.

 

Alex doesn’t know how to feel. Even though Maggie rejected her, her feelings haven’t stopped. In fact, the disloyal bastards her feelings are, they grow, fester like bacteria in a petri dish until they have their own little society resting in Alex’s chest.

 

They’re in her lungs, Alex thinks, because every time Maggie is near her, breathing hurts.

 

Because Alex and Maggie haven’t stopped being friends. A few days after The Incident, Maggie tried bringing it up, and Alex shrugged it off, saying she agreed with Maggie, because she’d rather lie about that than tell the truth about how her feelings have only gotten worse. It’s a truth she herself can barely handle.

 

Is this betrayal? Alex doesn’t really know what betrayal feels like, other than when her best friend in high school got a boyfriend and stopped hanging out with Alex all the time, causing Alex to get so angry their friendship ended (and, _oh_ ). Her job doesn’t have betrayal as an option; every D.E.O. agent is heavily trained and they become a family, a family that would _die_ for each other.

 

And for Alex, someone who works so hard to give she doesn’t know how to give herself a break, the idea of betrayal isn’t even an idea, but something that sounds like a myth.

 

But being around Maggie, getting to know Maggie, realizing she had feelings for Maggie, it was like her entire conscience flipped her world upside down and then told her that was the new normal. Now, Alex has to tamper the butterflies in her stomach every time she plays pool with Maggie. Now, Alex invites Maggie over to her apartment to watch horror films and eat garbage food and Alex has to pay attention to the movie, not Maggie’s lips or dimples or face or Maggie in general.

 

Now, she has to act like she isn’t falling in love with Maggie when she has a soulmate out there who deserves better than someone who fell in love with someone else.

 

_Do you think people can fall in love with someone that isn’t your soulmate?_ Alex writes one day. She just got home from an uneventful day at work, mainly sorting paperwork and organizing her lab, so she hasn’t come home dead tired. It’s been a few months, March, in fact, since she kissed Maggie in that bar, their bar, in November.

 

_Is that why you’ve stopped talking?_

 

And Alex winces. Soulmates are supposed to know you more than anyone, after all. She doesn’t see the point in lying. _Yeah. Sorry._

 

_Sometimes. I think so. I ask that question myself._

 

Alex’s heart constricts. Is her soulmate falling in love with someone else?

 

Is she jealous?

 

No, Alex thinks. She’s just a hypocrite.

 

―――――

 

It’s a Thursday night, which is reserved for Alex And Maggie Watch Bad Horror Films And Eat Thai. They’re at Maggie’s apartment, flipping between their two places every week, and Maggie is at the counter that divides the kitchen and the living room, writing a grocery list, because she goes shopping every Saturday. The windows are cracked, the April breeze cooling down the apartment.

 

Alex is doing her best not to look at Maggie, because she knows if she does, she’ll get lost. Even though the other woman has her back turned, even though her legs are so short her socked feet hover mindlessly when she sits on a stool low enough that Alex can touch the ground with her own feet, she’ll get lost, and that’s not something that needs to happen tonight.

 

“What should I choose tonight?” Alex asks, hunting Netflix.

 

“You know the rules,” Maggie says. “It’s my apartment, so you choose.” Alex sees her scribbling something down when, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Maggie jump up and out of the stool. “Shit!”

 

Alex turns her body to Maggie, but remains seated on the couch. “Everything okay?”

 

“Yeah, my pen just exploded on me. Ink everywhere. I’m gonna get washed off.”

 

Alex nods and starts to press the remote’s arrows to scroll down on the television when she notices something peculiar. She looks down, and on her own hands, are ink stains.

 

A million thoughts are battling in her mind, but the first and foremost escapes her throat. “Maggie,” she says. “Maggie!”

 

“What?” Maggie asks, peeking her head out of the kitchen.

 

Alex can’t do anything except hold out her splayed hands, look down at them, and look back at Maggie.

 

Maggie’s brown eyes widen, and she instinctively walks a little closer. “Alex…”

 

“I just… this whole time, it was you.” Alex starts feeling the prick of unshed tears in her eyes. “I was so stupid. I’m a fucking double doctor, and I still didn’t figure it out. God,” she chokes out a wet laugh, “when I met you, I literally told you about how I met an asshole at work, and you said the same, right? We were talking about each other. And when… and when we were talking about falling for other people… I was so jealous, I was so hypocritical because here I was admitting to my soulmate that I was falling for you. But that was just you, wasn’t it―”

 

Alex is interrupted by Maggie, still standing, but she’s closer to Alex now, Alex, still sitting, and they’re so close their knees knock together.

 

“Can you get up?” Maggie asks, and she hasn’t even finished the question before Alex uses her full body strength to propel herself forward and wrap her arms around Maggie in a tight hug, and Maggie instinctively hugs back just as tightly.

 

They stay like that for what seems like forever until Maggie backs out of it. Alex’s arms move to cup Maggie’s elbows and Maggie takes a few strands on each side of Alex’s face and combs through them with her fingers. “Hey, Alex.” Alex is looking at her like Maggie just hung the moon and wrote her name in the stars, and Maggie can’t help but feel the same way as she asks, “Can I kiss you?”

 

Alex doesn’t know if she nodded, sighed, “Okay,” as she exhaled what felt like the biggest held breath in her life, or if she did both, because all she remembers is feeling Maggie’s lips on her own, feeling her thumbs trace her cheekbones, feeling Maggie’s thick hair between her fingers. Her eyes are closed, but it’s as if, in that moment, she can see everything and anything.

 

When they break, Alex takes a look at Maggie before giggling, lightly tracing her face, and saying, “You have… you have a little something.”

 

“Actually, uh, I think it’s you.” Maggie traces Alex’s face in return. “I haven’t washed the ink off my hands yet.”

 

“Oh,” Alex says, “that makes sense.”

 

After they clean up, they’re snuggling on the couch, television off, when Maggie thinks of something.

 

“You were talking earlier about how the assholes we met at work were each other,” Maggie says, and Alex laughs. “How did we not figure this out sooner?”

 

“We’re really stupid, I guess,” Alex says. She’s laying down and her head is on Maggie’s lap, and she’s holding one of the other woman’s hands in both of her own, simultaneously intertwining their fingers and tracing the veins on the back of Maggie’s hand. “I’m so glad, though, that it’s you.”

 

There’s a silence. Maggie’s free hand is going through Alex’s auburn hair. “Yeah, because we had that discussion a few months ago about falling for someone other than our soulmate, didn’t we?”

 

“I’ve never been so happy to be wrong in my whole entire life,” Alex comments, and Maggie huffs a small laugh at that. “‘Cause y’know, I’m assuming… the woman you were talking about. It was me, wasn’t it?”

 

“Of course it was you, Alex.” Maggie raises an eyebrow. “Who else could it have been?”

 

“I dunno, Kara?” Maggie scoffs at that. “Really, though, I remember reading that on my arm and I got so jealous, which I felt worse about because I basically admitted to soulmate-you that I liked you, except you didn’t know it was me, and in the end, I just ended up being jealous of myself.”

 

“Me too,” Maggie says.

 

“Really?”

 

“Of course.”

 

After that, Alex takes out a pen and doodles on Maggie, snickering when it appears on her own skin, and Maggie takes the pen and writes “ _Hi, my name is Alex Danvers, and I’m soft!_ ” on herself. When it appears on Alex’s arm shortly after, Alex looks up at Maggie and says, “Take it off.”

 

“No,” Maggie says. “I think everyone at work should see it.”

 

They wrestle for the pen, laughing when it falls between the couch cushions, and not long after go to bed, deciding Alex should spend the night; Maggie can tell Alex is right about to fall asleep when her body jerks and she groans.

 

“Something wrong?” Maggie asks.

 

“Kara’s gonna be _so_ smug tomorrow. S’worth it, though.”

 

“Yeah?” Maggie scoots up closer to Alex and opens her arms. “C’mere.”

 

Alex, who was facing Maggie, doesn’t turn around and get spooned like Maggie expected, but she scoots without flipping over and gets her own arms around Maggie, resting her chin on Maggie’s sternum, and before Maggie can ever say anything about it, quickly falls asleep.

 

Maggie can live with that.


End file.
